DESCRIPTION: The primary goal of this proposal is to assess whether a parental intervention that targets very low birth weight infants' specific attention and organization deficits results in greater improvements in cognitive and social skills in these infants than a standard, non-specific, follow-up program. The secondary goal is to determine whether the intervention that targets these specific deficits will enhance VLBW infants' development to a greater extent than that of full-term infants. A third goal is to evaluate maternal factors which may explain variability in interventional effectiveness, including parenting beliefs, stressful life events, social support and psychological distress. The proposed intervention will target mothers' use of maintaining rather than redirecting their infants' focus of attention, as well as targeting mothers' use of provision of information about toys or activities used in the maintaining strategies. The goal is to place fewer demands on the more limited attentional capacity of the VLBW infant. The sample consists of 140 VLBW infants (70 high risk [HR]) and 70 low risk [LR]) and 70 full-term control infants. Infants within each group are assigned randomly to either the treatment group (play and learning strategies [PALS]) or the attention control group (development assessment of skills [DAS])During 10 treatment sessions which occur between the pre- and post-assessments, the facilitator and the mother work together to master the strategies through the use of videotapes, role-playing and modeling. Mothers and infants are tested at 5.5 months (pre-treatment), at 10.5 months (immediately post-treatment) and at 12 months (follow-up) with respect to targeted mothers' behaviors and infants' social and cognitive skills.